Times Up
by LoveWritingStories
Summary: Something dark and unknown is haunting Amity Park; stealing its children away. Closing your curtains won't keep it from looking, locking your doors won't keep it out, and hiding your children won't keep them safe. It is up to Danny to figure out what's happening and save the town, although he's on a clock, a clock that may just run out.


**Disclamier: I do not own Danny Phantom**

**Hello everybody.**

**I have been working on this story for months, h****ours were spent painfully editing and listening to creepy music. S****o I really hope you enjoy this chapter.**

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Rain pattered softly on the roof of Casper High as Danny Fenton ventured through its abandoned hallways. It had been about an hour since the bell had rung, signaling the end of a long week and the beginning of a three day weekend. The only sound was the humming of florescent lights, the gentle shower of water against the school, and Danny's echoing footsteps.

A light flickered at the end of the hallway as Danny reached his locker, giving off a creepy vibe. He had been pulled away from his last period class after his ghost sense went off, and he had spent the last two hours searching the town in vain. This confused Danny. He hadn't seen any ghosts in Amity for the past month, but his ghost sense had gone off five times that week alone. So there he was, opening his locker an hour after school had ended on a Friday afternoon, wondering where all the ghosts had gone.

Danny knew that being home late would get him in trouble, especially with what was going on lately. Eight children and teens from Amity Park and surrounding areas had gone missing in the past three weeks. They were all aged 4-13. His parents had been ultra protective of both Danny and Jazz since the second disappearance. In a way, he guessed he understood. Aside from a ghost attack every other day, Amity Park was one of the safest towns in the USA, with a crime rate of almost nothing. Having children going missing in a place like that, or anywhere even, is shocking. The worst part was that the police couldn't find a pattern in the victims nor the circumstances of their disappearances.

Danny rubbed at his eyes and let out a yawn. He had wanted to stay home from school that day after getting no sleep. His lack of rest was for two reasons. First, he had spent a huge chunk of the rainy night searching the surrounding wilderness and lake for the missing children, which turned up nothing. Second, when he got home, something in the house felt wrong and he couldn't get to sleep. Danny couldn't put his finger on _why_ it had felt wrong, but it had reminded him of when he was a kid and he left his bedroom at night and all the shadows in the dark looked like monsters.

Back in the present, Danny heard a noise. It was faint and far off, but it was there; it sounded like footsteps. For a moment he ignored it, choosing to write it off as a teacher or a janitor, but after a minute he realized how unlikely that was. Danny had seen the janitor leaving the school, probably for a smoke break, as he himself had entered. That meant the man wouldn't return for another ten minutes, minimum. It was also a long weekend; all of the teachers had already left.

Danny froze. The footsteps were louder now, and then there was another, different sound that he couldn't quite decipher. Something was wrong; footsteps shouldn't cause so much fear, right? They were just a sound, just a sound echoing throughout an empty school during the middle of a thunderstorm while the town was rife with danger. Danny stood at his locker as the sound became louder. His heart skipped a beat and his breath stopped. He could hear whoever, whatever, it was, around the corner. He felt like it was coming for _him_.

The footsteps didn't stop; they just kept getting louder. Danny turned his head and watched, still frozen in place. It didn't even cross his mind that he had ghost powers. No, he was paralyzed with fear, although he couldn't tell what was wrong. Then he heard it, one of the eeriest sounds he had ever heard; humming. It was a girl humming.

She walked around the corner into Danny's sight. Paulina. He watched as the Hispanic girl made her way down the hallway, humming that eerie tune. It was like Deja vu, the song was so close to his memory, although he couldn't place it. Something about that chorus terrified him. What was worse, Paulina didn't even notice him. Not like her normal 'seeing right through him' cliché, it was more like, she didn't see anything at all. She just hummed and walked, as if in a trance. She didn't stop until she bumped into the frozen boy.

Suddenly, Paulina was awake and alert. "Watch where you're going, Fenton," she spat, and resumed humming quietly.

Danny's shoulders relaxed minimally. It was Paulina, just Paulina. He turned his gaze over to the corner that she'd come from, somehow knowing there was still something there, but he pointedly chose to ignore it. With a shiver, he turned his attention back to the very unhappy girl in front of him.

"Hey, _you_ bumped into _me_," he informed her, as nicely as he could. No point in trying to pass up a chance at getting a date. Paulina stayed silent for a second, as if she was trying to recollect if it had really been her who'd initiated their contact. "What are you doing here?" Danny asked, as he checked where she had come from once again. Was that a shadow? No, couldn't have been. It was gone, anyways. He had imagined it…

"I'm here for school, duh," Paulina snapped, drawing Danny's attention. She was still humming that creepy song.

"Paulina, school ended an hour ago," he told her, only half paying attention as he kept his eyes on that corner. "And can you stop with the humming?!" The song was creeping him out more and more every second. As if being in an abandoned hallway with a flickering light as rained poured outside wasn't bad enough.

Paulina glared at him. "Haha, very funny. Also, I'm not humming, jackass," she scoffed, but took out her phone to check the time anyway. "Huh," Paulina whispered. "But I was just in the bathroom…"

Danny knew better than to think she was talking to him. It sounded more as if she were talking to herself, trying to figure out what was going on. And that damn humming, too, she wouldn't stop.

Once again, Danny's attention was drawn to the corner. Was it darker? He felt something there, something just out of his grasp, something malevolent, sinister. Suddenly, a clap of thunder struck; a second later, the lights began to flicker even more rapidly as the storm picked up outside. They came on one last time before going out completely.

The darkness seemed to last for hours rather than a few seconds, and Danny swore he felt something brush against his skin. "Paulina?" he asked, assuming it was her. As if on cue, the lights flicked back on, revealing him to be alone in the deserted hallway. Paulina was gone, and so was the feeling of wariness that had been following him throughout the hallways. "Paulina?!" he called out, with no reply. Quickly, Danny gathered up his belongings, shoved them into his backpack, and ran. Whatever had just happened, he wanted nothing to do with it.

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**Normally I'd ask you to tell me if I should continue this, but I love this story so I'll be doing it anyways. But still tell me is you enjoyed it or not! As always, if you see any spelling for grammar mistakes that me or my lovely beta readers missed, please let me know and I will fix them as soon as possible. Review, follow and favorite, there will be more to come! Eventually. **


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